Ciryl Gane will face Jon Jones on Saturday night for the vacant UFC heavyweight title.
Ciryl Gane, who is aiming for the UFC heavyweight belt at 32 on Saturday in Las Vegas, faces a fighter considered an MMA legend in the person of 35-year-old Jon Jones. “Fighting someone of this caliber is not common”he admits in an interview with AFP.
You face an MMA icon in the person of Jon Jones. What will be the key to the fight?
“It is undoubtedly the biggest fight of my career and I also think for French MMA. Someone of this caliber, it’s not common, that’s for sure (…) He will bet a lot on his fight, he is a very great wrestler. He has a wrestling background before MMA, so it’s something that’s in his DNA, which comes out automatically. Is he going to do that? No, I don’t think so, he’s going to try to vary, he’s versatile. In any case, we also put a lot of focus on the fight.
It looks like he has no weaknesses. How can you put him in danger?
“He doesn’t really have a weak point. He is a versatile person and above all who has a very good fight, good management of the cage, good overall management of the opponent. So he’s someone who has a very good +fight IQ+ (tactical intelligence) but I also have a very good +fight IQ+. Me, on my side, my strengths, it will be my + footwork + (footwork) in the sense that I move a lot, I move more than him. This is his first experience in the heavyweight category, so maybe that too can be to my advantage.
Jon Jones is considered one of the most talented fighters in MMA history. Was he a role model for you?
“Not at all, I never had a role model. The only role models I have are people I watch all day long, my teammates. They are the ones who serve as my models, who inspire me. Afterwards, it’s true that Jon Jones overall has a style that suits me in the sense that I like versatile people, and he is one. So he’s someone who is still quite inspiring, but we don’t have the same style at all.”
How are your backgrounds different?
“When he was already a multiple-time champion, I hadn’t even started combat sports yet. When I started Thai boxing at 25, he had already been a champion for three years, I didn’t even know MMA. I was just starting Thai boxing and then I switched to MMA in 2018. Our stories are really very different, he started very young, I started very late.
Your personalities seem totally opposite too…
“Yes, we are completely different in terms of character. He’s a bit of a controversial person and I’m a fairly tidy person (laughs). He’s more of a bad boy. But we’re going to fight, it’s sport. It’s the sporting aspect that I put forward, even before putting the experience and the intimate things of the person, that, I don’t care a bit. In the cage, we do not enter with weapons, we enter with our fists and our feet and that is what will happen. We are going to give a good fight.”
